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Post by Hollywood Heidi on Jul 27, 2019 14:22:14 GMT -8
Hope's Studio ApartmentStudio apartment rented by Hope during her college years. Located near Berkeley College. |
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Post by Hollywood Heidi on Jul 27, 2019 17:48:53 GMT -8
A COUPLE MONTHS AFTER ANDRO'S
FIRST BIG RALLY AT BERKELEY
JANUARY 2001
Hope woke up and glanced at her clock. She still had a good ten minutes before her alarm would go off but she just couldn't sleep anymore. Too much was weighing on her mind and she hadn't had a good night's sleep for about a week now. She turned her head to glance at the man she was sharing her bed with. Andro was still asleep. In any normal relationship, she'd have the impulse to lean over and place a kiss on the lips of the man she shared her bed with, but this wasn't normal. She wasn't even sure if this was an actual relationship. Andro never showed passion outside of giving his speeches or the physical times between the sheets. Most of the time, it was after those speeches that they ended up in bed. She couldn't help wondering if she was merely catching the overflow of the overwhelming passionate reaction from crowds. Andro never showed emotion. His expression was always unreadably serious. His closed off demeanor gave her the impression that impulsive kisses along with things such as make-out sessions, hand holding, cuddling, pillow talk, date night, or any other normal dating ritual was not part of whatever this was. It was easy to ignore the signs at first, caught up in the passion herself, but lately, it had been weighing heavily on her mind and her heart. This wasn't right. Hope wanted more in a relationship. She wanted an actual relationship. Not just some fling. Again, without being able to get an emotional read off Andro, she had no idea if this even leveled up to fling standards. Hope had quietly shuffled out of bed and had started to get ready while waiting for Andro to awake while all these thoughts had being going through her mind. She needed to get this talk over with to free her mind for one of her busier class schedule days. |
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Post by DarkSideCookie on Aug 6, 2019 7:31:11 GMT -8
His eyes flipped open. Suddenly yet not exactly with a start. He had been deep into a dream, but like so often every detail slipped his mind in the very second of his awakening although it always was like still seeing shadows and still hearing voices in the distance. Maybe his lack of emotions or at least the fact that he wasn't attaching any importance to them was one of the reasons why his subconscious mind wasn't closely linked with his conscious mind.
When Andro's head slowly turned towards the other side of the bed, he found it empty. Quiet breathing sounds coming from the window made him sit up eventually. For a moment he was just watching Hope in silence. Something was different with her these last days, although he didn't know what it was, for to figure it out would mean to emphasize with her. Something he had never learned. And so he just remained silent until it would be her to speak up first.
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Post by Hollywood Heidi on Aug 23, 2019 21:47:49 GMT -8
Hope had made quick work of getting ready for the day so that she could leave as soon as this unpleasant talk was over and allow him some privacy. The last thing she wanted was for them to be uncomfortably stuck together, both getting themselves ready in her small studio apartment with awkwardness and emotions hanging in the air. Well, her emotions, at least. She couldn't help picture him reacting with a shrug, if even that, and moving on as if she'd simply suggested they put an end to something as inconsequential as carpooling.
She stood at the window, the steam from her coffee cup curling up, blurring the view she wasn't really taking in. Every few moments, she automatically took a sip.
Hope picked up the barely discernable rustle of his head shifting on the pillow in the quiet of her place. "Morning," she said without turning around. "Made you some coffee." Another steaming cup sat on the table near her.
This would be hard enough as it was. Dragging someone into a conversation of this depth right when they woke up was just cruel. Hope remained quiet, allowing him the time to properly let the fog of sleep lift from his brain.
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Post by DarkSideCookie on Sept 14, 2019 1:37:11 GMT -8
"Morning,""Made you some coffee."
Without a word, Andro raised from the bed to step towards the table, where the steam of a freshly made cup of coffee was greeting him already. He wasn't exactly a morning person but never had problems with tumbling up from bed immediately. Maybe that was another thing that had to do with his lack of dream recall. While other people might revel in the echos of sweet nighttime, his head was all blank so that he quickly concentrated on what had to be done in the daytime.
Andro took a sip of his coffee before throwing a questioning glance at Hope, which wasn't more than a twitch of his eyebrow though. He actually hated to be the first to speak up, especially since she looked like she had something on her mind (then why didn't she just talk?), but this time the silence was starting to annoy him more than a little change of his attitude.
"Is something... wrong?", he asked kind of socially awkward, not overly interested in an answer at that.
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Post by Hollywood Heidi on Sept 14, 2019 17:15:23 GMT -8
Hope waited quietly, only glancing from the window a couple times. In a normal relationship, she imagined the man getting up from her bed and quietly making his way over, standing behind her and putting his arms around her, pulling her back against him, placing a kiss on her neck...
"Is something... wrong?"
The little fantasy playing out in her mind burst with his rather uninterested tone in the question and--was that a twinge of annoyance or did she imagine it? To think, she'd been feeling guilty, stressing herself on how she was going to approach this. Well, if he was going to be emotionally disconnected and unaffected by the fact that something was bothering her, then dammit, so would she.
Hope turned away from the window and calmly, casually pulled a chair out and sat at the table. "We need to have a serious discussion," she said with a gesture toward another chair, her tone matter-of-fact, though not as emotionless as she'd been determined to be.
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Post by DarkSideCookie on Oct 4, 2019 5:26:18 GMT -8
"We need to have a serious discussion,"
Andro didn't know what it was, but something in the way she prefaced what would be following was triggering a familiar emotion inside of him. While anyone else probably would have come up with feelings of worry and concern, this emotion was a totally different one. Andro was ignoring it for now.
With a rather blank expression Andro took a seat in the chair opposite from Hope; silently waiting for her to go on. Never would it come to his mind that this serious discussion might have something to do with how they interrelated with each other.
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Post by Hollywood Heidi on Oct 6, 2019 9:16:09 GMT -8
Hope sat quiet a moment longer, taking a sip of her coffee. She didn't want to prolong this--it was difficult enough as it was--but she was having trouble determining how to go about this. Andro's intense silence and unreadable expression made it even harder to determine.
She started to pick at a loose thread on the tablecloth, trying hard to make herself be as emotionless about this as Andro was, but it was impossible. 'Just do it. Get it over with,' she coached herself, sitting up and squaring her shoulders.
Hope made herself look him in the eyes and tried to speak calmly, neutrally. "I don't think we should see each other anymore..." she stopped there, sounding as if her sentence was finished and as if she were unintentionally implying she didn't want to see him at all, in any capacity. Pulling her gaze away only added to the implication that she didn't have more to add. In truth, what had tripped her up was the word she'd been about to put at the end was 'romantically' but there had never been anything resembling romance between them. She was distracted, trapped in her own thoughts, staring sightlessly at the table while trying to come up with a suitable word for the end of the sentence without sounding crass.
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Post by DarkSideCookie on Oct 12, 2019 5:04:46 GMT -8
For another while, they both sat in silence. Only Hope, Andro and this upcoming emotion that was scratching the surface like a little bug captured in a glass, trying to force its way out, yet going unheard. His eyes were still aimed at every move Hope made, as he watched the cup in der hand raising to her lips and lowering again in silence. And then she suddenly spoke up.
"I don't think we should see each other anymore..."
Andro's features remained unchanged. He was expecting her to add something else, and when she didn't, he came up with slight confusion, seen by only a twitch of his eyebrow. She pulled her gaze away from him. The little bug inside the glass blustered, yet was still ignored. Again and again, it was flying against the soundproof dome, the only noise to hear a low-keyed ticking every time that it was deflecting off its cage.
"I do not understand.", Andro eventually said, not like someone who was calling for further explanation but like someone who literally didn't understand.
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Post by Hollywood Heidi on Nov 3, 2019 16:39:56 GMT -8
Hope continued to stare down at the tablecloth. What had that twitch in his eyebrow meant? Hell, the rare moments he showed any sort of reaction, it was only as far as something like that; barely discernable and completely gave away nothing.
"I do not understand."
He was the one to break the silence. Hope looked up, slightly surprised that he'd been the one to do so but also confounded that anyone, even an emotionally distant person, didn't pick up on the beginnings of a break-up talk. Shit, she was going to have to spell it out. As if breaking up with someone wasn't awkward and difficult enough as it was. Hope shifted even more uncomfortably with the thought that to him, maybe this wasn't even any sort of thing at all and therefore "breaking up" didn't exist in the equation.
"This isn't working," she said, gesturing between the two of them. "You seem to be... fine," she said, the word 'happy' not fitting in context with the person across from her, "with how things are." A sort of unspoken agreement that this was a no-strings-attached, all physical, no emotional arrangement. Impersonal. Closed off. Detached. Casual. That's the assumption she'd come to of what this was to him. "But I want something real." She looked down again, feeling vulnerable opening up this way with someone she assumed thought romance was ridiculous nonsense. "I need someone who's not afraid to share with me how they feel, physically and emotionally."
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Post by DarkSideCookie on Nov 9, 2019 15:20:42 GMT -8
Andro was staring at her in slight confusion. He really had no idea what this was about. Why shouldn't they see each other anymore after everything they had achieved since their tie-up? Andro was feeling a lot better with her because he finally had understood that in this set of two it was much more likely to get heard and to make a difference in this wrong world.
"This isn't working,"
The confusion just grew some more, until it suddenly dawned on him what her gesturing between the two of them was supposed to mean. Another twitch of his eyebrow happened while Hope went on, unaware of the emotion that was seething under his surface.
"You seem to be... fine,"
It was hardly seen on Andro's features what was about to break forth, yet his breathing became a little harder and every now and then his eyelids twitched nervously.
"with how things are."
The little bug bounced off the dome of glass, not stopping its flight against it until the dome would finally be falling so that it could break free.
"But I want something real."
At first, it was just a little crack in the glass but the incessant fight of the bug would be breaking it completely soon enough.
"I need someone who's not afraid to share with me how they feel, physically and emotionally."
... CRACK!
All of a sudden Andro rose from his chair, knocking down the table between them with one move, and with it every item upon, including their cups of coffee.
"AM I NOT REAL?", he screamed at her in anger; anger that he had never felt before. There always had been kind of a frustration towards things but never before had he felt it like this. Before Hope could have given any answer nor any other reaction to his outburst in the first place, Andro continued on it by smashing the furnishing around. This sudden emotion was overwhelming him, was making his heart feel like exploding every further moment, so all he could do was to try to get rid of it somehow. "AM I NOT PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY ENOUGH FOR YOU?"
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Post by Hollywood Heidi on Nov 17, 2019 13:17:32 GMT -8
He's remained so quiet, unmoving, save for the occasional twitch in the area of his eyes during her whole dialogue that she hadn't picked up even the slightest hint of the typhoon that stuck so suddenly and so violently.
The table between them upended in his fury and Hope knocked over her own chair in her reflexive haste to remove herself from the line of flying objects that went with it.
"AM I NOT REAL?"
Hope flinched and took a stumbling step back. Never had she witnessed anyone scream words with such heated rage, let alone directly at her.
"Andro," she said, hands held up in calming surrender, but she was drowned out as he continued his tirade, first by the smashing of her furnishes and whatever items came into contact with his hands, then by the horrific tone and volume of his voice.
"AM I NOT PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY ENOUGH FOR YOU?"
Hope watched in stunned horror. Jesus. His physical and emotional response went from that of a cold and lifeless stone statue to that of a wild and unpredictable Category 5 hurricane. Big object cracked, smaller ones flew erratically in random directions, bursting into pieces as they came into contact with walls or other objects.
A wall stopped her progress of putting space between them. She hadn't even realized she'd been backing away. Objects continued to fly around the room and Hope finally snapped out of her stunned daze when one happened to land a mere few inches from her head.
Hope flinched and ducked away, then stood upright, glaring at the eye of the hurricane, her own anger starting to seethe beneath the fear that still had a tremble going through her. "Andro!" she said warningly, but was drown out by the crashing. Her hand went to a sudden stinging sensation on her temple. She pulled it away to find blood on her shaking hand. Hope glanced down at the shattered glass vase, making the connection that a shard of it had caught her. She felt a small trickle of blood work its way down her cheek. Blood was drawn. Accidental or not, her anger flared just a little brighter than her fear. "ANDRO! STOP!" she shouted, hand pressing against the scrape to slow the flow of bleeding. Facial wounds always bled in a way that made a wound appear worse than it was.
She was good and pissed but it was hard to hold up a tough and angry composure when the eye of the hurricane put its attention on her.
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Post by DarkSideCookie on Dec 13, 2019 15:55:57 GMT -8
His outburst wasn't actually of hatred but pure anger, like impersonally directed towards just the matter itself than towards the person who had brought it up. Or maybe there just wasn't enough room in his headspace for two intense emotions at the same time. Either way, Andro could barely control just this one emotion right now. Just as his anger wasn't specifically directed at Hope herself, so wasn't his physical outburst. Instead, it was to get rid of those emotions he couldn't handle. Not only weren't objects actually supposed to hit her but Andro also completely lost his focus on her at some point, even though his eyes were still aimed at her.
"ANDRO! STOP!"
One last object hit the ground, accompanied by Hope's shouting before Andro felt exhaustion getting the better of him all of a sudden. The anger was still there, yet seemed to start crawling back into the background, as he faced away from Hope and instead leaned one arm against the wall right next to her. Still breathing hard, he didn't say anything.
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Post by Hollywood Heidi on Dec 14, 2019 15:04:55 GMT -8
Hope studied his profile. Exhaustion seemed to be dissipating the rage that had fueled his rampage. She knew that he hadn't intended to hurt her. Still, what he'd just done was completely out of hand and unacceptable. Andro needed help beyond what she could provide as a friend or whatever it was they were. He needed professional help.
She pulled her eyes from him to take in the room. It was trashed. So much of it unsalvageable. An insistent knocking at her door accompanied by the muffled sound of her name being called finally broke through the chaos. Now was not a good time for her nosey neighbor to be sticking her nose into Hope's business. "Everything's fine, Mrs. Lee!" Hope shouted out with enough force to not leave room for a second round of questioning. Silence was the only response.
Hope leaned back against the wall beside Andro. Her head fell forward, hand still pressed to the wound. A few moments of quiet passed, neither wanting to break it. She felt blood seep between her fingers and watched a drop of it fall to the carpet. It caused her anger to flare again and finally got her to break the silence.
Remaining still, not bothering to look his way, she spoke with quiet, crisp resolution that said there was nothing he could say to change her mind on this. "I think you should leave."
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Post by DarkSideCookie on Dec 15, 2019 22:32:01 GMT -8
For a while, Andro had been focused on himself only until most of his anger had dissipated. It had been either his own clearing of mind or the sudden knock on the door, followed by Hope's shouting, that brought his attention back around them. Almost terrified about the chaos he had caused all around the place, his head slowly turned towards Hope, who was sitting right beside him. Another emotion, one that he couldn't name, struck him as well as his eyes fell on the bloody wound in her face. He didn't mean to hurt her. He actually had never hurt anyone.
Just as Andro was about to break the long pause of silence, it was Hope who spoke up first, her voice sounding somehow different.
"I think you should leave."
He looked at her for some more moments before slowly pushing away from the wall behind them and actually heading to leave the room. Halfway towards the door, he turned around again. "Sorry.", Andro said and in this very moment truly meant it. The one emotion that he couldn't name but feel right now - at least a little bit. Guilt. This feeling of guilt probably though would never be stronger than this feeling of anger and fear of loss that had gotten the better of him all so sudden.
*** Andro exits ***
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Post by Hollywood Heidi on Jan 11, 2020 18:22:19 GMT -8
The door closed with a symbolic finality that pushed the tumultuous waves of emotions within past her flooding point. Hope's head fell back against the wall as she let the tears she'd been holding back silently fall down her cheeks.
She sat there awhile, facing the reality and letting the emotions out. Better to deal with it now in her solitary quiet. Bottling up something this big could get the better of a person when they least expect or want it.
It was all so confusing. Hope wasn't sure how she felt about it all, but knew it didn't feel right. Ending a relationship should be impacting her more than it was and definitely in a different way. Her heart should be breaking but instead, there was only a pang. The emotion that mostly dominated her was guilt. Andro had always seemed different from most. Watching how he'd changed as time moved on and as his fight gained traction, she'd started to think she'd been wrong in assuming he'd merely been an introvert. No, there was something deep seated and dark and she couldn't help but feel that her involvement had only served to feed that darkness to the point of an insatiable hunger.
She wasn't sure how long she sat in silence, but the tingling sensation from the lack of blood flow in her arm due to holding her hand against the wound for so long finally brought her back around. Hope got to her feet, retrieving her phone from where it had fallen when the table had been upturned. The time on the now cracked screen showed that she'd missed her first class and was already late for the second. Looking around the trashed room, she'd easily made the decision that she wasn't going anywhere today. Hope pulled her eyes away from the mess and headed for the bathroom to tend to her wound.
*****
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Post by Hollywood Heidi on May 31, 2020 13:35:17 GMT -8
Hope knelt on the ground, gathering chunks of broken glass and dropping them into the small trash can she'd brought over from the kitchen. She was starting to grow numb to the uncommon sound of glass hitting glass with each piece she dropped in. She was only in the beginning stages of cleaning up the mess when there was another knock at her door. Hope stared at the door and froze, not wanting the tinkling sound of broken glass to give away that someone was home.
Maybe they'd go away. She couldn't handle making nice with someone right now. Not hearing the shuffle of footsteps moving away, she tried to figure who it might be to determine if she'd even speak to the person briefly through the door. It wasn't Andro returning to work things out. Hearts to hearts weren't his style and his knocks were short and succinct, much like the man himself. It had been a soft knock, more Mrs. Lee's style, but Mrs. Lee always immediately announced herself through the door after knocking.
There was a hesitancy to this person, standing there quietly as if figuring out what to do next just as she did from the other side of the door. She heard a muffled shifting followed by another knock and this time, the person spoke.
"Hope, it's your father. Please open the door."
Stunned, Hope fell back on her haunches and stared at the door. Her father never visited her. Their interactions were rare, mostly occurring at Pym Tech, and always related to business. What had prompted him to make the trip? His tone didn't suggest it had to do with her mother. Even though they never spoke of her, she knew he'd tell her if he'd finally succeeded in finding a way to get her back from the Quantum Realm.
There was some muffled talking before he spoke again. "Hope, I'm coming in."
Sure enough, the sound of a key entering the lock was easily heard in the quiet. How the hell did he have a key? Hope shot to her feet in a panic, looking at the mess but realizing it wasn't humanly possible to hide it in the seconds she had. She quickly yanked the clip from her hair and shoved it in her pocket, shaking out the messy up-do and pulling some of her hair forward over her temple to hide the little bandage.
She managed to hide that one little thing just as the door swung open, revealing her father handing the key back to Mrs. Lee, whose worried expression intensified when she glanced in at the mess.
"Thank you, Mrs. Lee. I've got it from here."
The way he'd spoken to her, there was a familiarity to it and his thanks held a deeper gratitude than that of the lending of a key. Dumbfounded, Hope could only stare at her father as he entered and shut the door behind him, barely noticing Mrs. Lee shuffle off as she put the pieces together. She crossed her arms, giving him a hard stare. "Don't you think it's time you stopped paying other people to watch over me, Hank?"
Hope had found herself unexpectedly on the defensive and had lashed out. Calling him Hank had always been enough of a stab but she'd given the knife a little twist. It was a low blow and the hurt and regret that flitted across her father's face gave Hope a twinge of regret over her harsh words.
Hank pulled his eyes from her and assessed the room to try to hide the hurt and regret that had gone into them. Science was Hank's strength. It had been the only thing he'd been good at sharing with his little girl, teaching her, setting up their own experiments, bonding over it. But that was hardly enough to raise a kid. Care and compassion, emotional support, how to be a good parent, those had been Janet's strengths amongst so many others. They were the things that really mattered. He knew he'd absorbed himself in his own grief when they'd lost her, sending Hope off to private schools, thinking they could better provide what she needed than he could while he put all his time and energy into getting back his wife and the parent Hope deserved.
It had become an obsession. He'd fully immersed himself and the years had just melted away. When he'd finally taken the time to look up, he'd found his little girl had grown into an angry and distant young woman, fueled by hurt and abandonment that always shone through her eyes passed the tough exterior when she looked at him. He'd been responsible for growing and nurturing her love of science while he'd been present but his absence had inadvertently taught her the false lesson that she could only depend on herself.
"Is everything okay?" he asked softly.
The concern and care on his face rattled at the walls she'd built up against him. "Everything's fine," she said in a clipped, dismissive tone. Hope knelt back down and continued gathering the glass into the trash can as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
Hank looked around, the loss of control and level of fury a person was capable of to cause this kind of damage striking alarm through him every time he took it in. He had every confidence Hope could take care of herself but that did not make up for lack of life experiences. She was still young. Still hadn't been through that much or witnessed the monsters that lurked in the shadows. Even he had been ignorant to them until he'd put on the Ant-Man suit and had fought against those monsters. While this wasn't the level of Hydra, it was still the work of someone who was clearly unhinged. Hank had seen red flags about the boy since the first reports he'd gotten on him, yet Hope had remained with him all this time.
He hoped this incident would have made her come to her senses and cut ties, but he couldn't get a read on her. "That Andro kid did this, didn't he?" Of course he knew who'd done this, but he wanted to test Hope's response. See if she'd defend or lie on Andro's behalf.
The sound of Andro's name coming out of her father's mouth had Hope's head snapping up, surprise taking the place of the usual stony expression she held around him. There was more familiarity and knowledge about Andro in how her father had said that than Mrs. Lee could have provided. The fact that her father didn't sound surprised further pissed her off. He'd noticed something about Andro she hadn't which worked against her resolve of not needing him. Hope scrambled back to her feet. "You doing background checks on my boyfriends now?" she lashed out snarkily.
Her father continued to stare hard at her and she saw a slow fury rising. He'd never shown anger, always taking the anger and bitterness she threw at him with immense patience as if she had every right to treat him that way. It took a moment before she realized he was staring hard at her temple. Her hair had fallen back when she'd looked up. Hope pulled her bangs over her temple again, going on the defensive. "You have no right--"
Hank cut her off, gesturing angrily at the bandage. "He hurt you! I have every goddamn right!" Hope looked struck by his outburst. He took a steadying breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. He managed to lower his voice but the sternness remained. "Look... I know I deserve it, but could you cut the animosity shit for just one minute?" He took her silence as compliance. "I need to hear that you're not going to see him anymore."
Jesus, he'd never shouted at her before. It was his admission that he felt he deserved her animosity that really left her dumbstruck. He'd never reacted much to it, so she hadn't thought he'd cared enough for it to affect him. Hope tried to relieve his concern with a dual reassurance. "It was an accident. I broke it off with him," she said calmly, her hands raising from her sides a bit before falling back down.
Hank watched her carefully. The subconscious movement of her hands making some kind of connection between the break-up and the mess. He wasn't sure if the mess was the reason for the break-up or if the break-up had resulted in the mess. Either way, this was completely unacceptable. And while he believed she had the resolve to move on from Andro, he wasn't so sure if Andro would do the same. "Good," he said with quiet relief, sounding like his calm self once again. He looked around, wanting to offer to help but knowing she'd turn it down. "That's all I needed to hear. I'll leave you alone."
Proving his point that he wasn't good with the care and compassion and emotional support side of parenting, Hank walked out and quietly closed the door behind him, thinking his presence only bothered her. Like the other rare moments Hope had let her walls down, he'd completely missed the queue that Hope needed him right now.
With angry determination, Hank set out straight away to take care of the Andro problem for good.
*****
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